Western Europe: The Brit turning Austria banking west

CEO Byron Haynes is steering Bawag PSK away from its past in trade unionism and postal savings. The bank’s future, it seems, is not in the east, but as a consolidator in the rapidly changing markets of the west.

The suggestion, even three years ago, that
Austria’s fourth biggest bank might help prop up
UniCredit – let alone
Deutsche Bank – would have seemed ridiculous. Back
then memories were still fresh of the bank run and bail-out
under Bawag PSK’s former ownership.

In the years following the crisis, US private equity firms
Cerberus and later GoldenTree helped recapitalize Bawag after
acquiring it in 2007 from the Austrian Trade Union Federation.
By 2012 the new management led by CEO Byron Haynes had done a
good job of stabilizing and cleaning up the institution. Its
survival was less in doubt, but it still seemed a long way from
being able to make acquisitions and certainly not ones that
could see it double in size, or more.

In the past three years, however, Bawag’s
profit has more than quadrupled and its capital ratios have
more than doubled. It is now...

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